of a campaign, the marshaling and victualing of troops, and the whole art of setting and maintaining an army in the field. Yet, though brave and warlike as the most chivalrous of his ancestors--Gothic, Burgundian, or Suabian--he was entirely without chivalry. Fanaticism for the faith, protection for the oppressed, fidelity to friend or foe, knightly loyalty to a cause deemed sacred, the sacrifice of personal interests to great ideas, generosity of hand and heart--all those qualities which unite with courage and constancy to make up the ideal chevalier, Charles not only lacked but despised. He trampled on the weak antagonist, whether burgher or petty potentate. He was false as water. He inveigled his foes, who trusted to his imperial promises, by arts unworthy an emperor or a gentleman. He led about the unfortunate John Frederic, of Saxony, in his own language, “like a bear in a chain,” ready to be slipped upon Maurice should “the boy” prove ungrateful. He connived at the famous forgery of the prelate of Arras, to which the Landgrave Philip owed his long imprisonment--a villainy worse than many for which humbler rogues have suffered by thousands upon the gallows. The contemporary world knew well the history of his frauds, on scale both colossal and minute, and called him familiarly “Charles qui triche.” The absolute master of realms on which the sun perpetually shone, he was not only greedy for additional dominion, but he was avaricious in small matters, and hated to part with a hundred dollars. To the soldier who brought him the sword and gauntlets of Francis I he gave a hundred crowns, when ten thousand would have been less than the customary present; so that the man left his presence full of desperation. The three soldiers who swam the Elbe, with their swords in their mouths, to bring him the boats with which he passed to the victory of Mühlberg, received from his imperial bounty a doublet, a pair of stockings, and four crowns apiece. His courtiers and ministers complained bitterly of his habitual niggardliness, and were fain to eke out their slender salaries by accepting bribes from every hand rich enough to bestow them. In truth, Charles was more than anything else a politician, notwithstanding his signal abilities as a soldier.